Beowulf and Grendel: Beer-soaked Trollslayer Edtion

What kind of fanedit (true fanedit = TF, extended edition = EE, special collection & preservation = SP): TF
tagline: Gone in thirty minutes!
original film name: Beowulf and Grendel
new film name : Beowulf and Grendel: Beer-soaked Trollslayer Edtion
film studio name : Movision / Darclight
edit crew name : Captain Khajiit
Date Original Film Was Released : 2005
Date Edit Was Released : 2009
Original Runtime : 103 min
New Runtime : 35 min
Amount of time Cut/Added : approximately 70 mins removed
Cuts removed/added/extended : see below
Fanedit details (please add here details about DVD contents as well as video and audio information): PAL SL DVD, anamorphic widescreen 1.78:1, AC3 5.1 audio - English only, static main menu with appropriate fonts, animated scene selection menu, no subtitles
Your intention for this fanedit: to turn Sturla Gunnarson's complicated and serious film into a straight-forward light-hearted short adventure film about Beowulf's clash with Grendel. Fun and humour are emphasised.

Your way to achieve your intention:

* All the on-screen textual chapter headings are removed from the film.
* The slaying of the Troll's father by Hrothgar and all subsequent allusions to it are removed. The king is now a weak drunken ruler, but not
a culpable one.
* There is no attempt to explain why Grendel is the way he is. In this edit a ****ing troll just does what a ****ing troll does.
* Grendel's bashing of his forehead and hands with stones is now his crazed response to the noise or mere presence of the hall, or the
actions of the warriors. His anointing of his forehead with blood is now done in imitation or mockery of the pagan priest's sacrifice at the
beginning of the story.
* The witch has been removed from the story, as she is the main plot device by which the reasons behind the Troll's behaviour are
expounded.
* All Christian elements have been completely removed from the story, including references to God in the dialogue and the figure of the
priest. He can be seen in the background in one scene, but is not in focus and could be any villager with a staff.
* After the Troll's second visit to the hall, the blood trails that he left previously now guide the company of warriors to his lair. The figure
of the guide is removed completely, and the first fruitless ascent in search of the lair is telescoped with the finding of the lair's entrance
on the company's second ascent.
* The smashing of the Troll's father's head is removed. Brecca's "treatment" of the entrance to the Troll's lair now becomes the motivation
for the Troll's vengeful return to the Hall.
* The final fight scene with Grendel is edited to make it consistent with the new plot.
* Disapproving glances at the parading and mounting of Grendel's severed arm during the victory celebration in the hall are minimised.


Hardware and software information (what did you use to create your fanedit):

DVD Decrypter
Womble MPEG Video Wizard DVD
DVD Lab Pro 2.0

Time needed for the edition: two weeks - including learning time
persons involved: one

I've actually finished this and I need a volunteer to have a look at it. I live in the UK, so I don't really want to post it to Molasar, as he is in the US. Let me know if you're interested in having a look. I have the rapidshare URLs to PM a potential reviewer.

Review by White43

I'm actually quite partial to Beowulf and Grendel, I think it was much better than the animated Beowulf that came after it. Sure, they both take liberties with the story, but at least with B&G, I felt that the backstory they gave Grendel was far more believable.

Anyhoo - so what we have here is an almost purist edition of Beowulf, the original Anglo-Saxon story. But cutting out 70 minutes is pretty bold - does it work?

By and large - yes. B&G is fleshed out with back stories and extra characters, but at the core, is the original story. Strip all those extra elements out and you still have Beowulf the original story at the centre...

Of course, some will argue that now they don't understand Grendel's motivation - but then again, he never had one in the original tale - as the editor puts - "a ****king troll just does what a ****ing troll does.". Now he's a nuisance to which our heroes try to resolve.

Another issue some might be considering is lack of character development - but, your main characters are Beowulf, Grendel and Hrothgar....Grendel, is well Grendel....but surprisingly, Beowulf and Hrothgar do get enough lines and time on the screen for us to have a sense of who they are and what they're about.

So, in terms of the actual edit and story - 10/10

Video and Audio

The video and audio itself is fine. Nice picture and sound.

Technical :

It's not without a few issues. These all tend to be transitional issues that could be quite easily addressed.

- Transition to opening credits doesn't feel quite as smooth as it could be - and notably, Sarah Polley is not in this film :wink:

(Although note, I did enjoy the line right before the credits - "I did have a beer...").

- 20:09 - the screen suddenly goes black for about six seconds. Was this intentional? It feels very odd.
- 26:22 - An audio fade doesn't quite work here. It might be better not to do it at all...?
- 30:40 - Quite a notably bad audio transition, the audio after being quite loud suddenly drops out and conversely:
- 31:00 - The music comes in very quickly - this could be resolved by fading up a bit slower

So, sadly (and I mean sadly) - I can't approve this in it's current state - but I don't think you'd have to put much effort in to resolve these issues. I see you're using Womble - if you're using a separate audio and video track, the effects in Womble don't expand to the audio line which is a pain. However, if you export to a single MPEG, re-import, you can then use some of Womble's transitional effects or fades - which I find don't effect the video.

It's a great first effort - I enjoyed.

I would like to thank White 43 for his interest in this edit and the time it took him to review it. I was hoping to having some fun with this edit and learn from my mistakes, so I won't give up.

I'll ask a few questions about your comments if I may.

- Transition to opening credits doesn't feel quite as smooth as it could be - and notably, Sarah Polley is not in this film :wink:

I'll try to massage this transition a little. I know you were joking about Sarah Polley, but on a more serious note, I don't feel happy about removing people from the credits of a film, even if the edit does not feature them. Some faneditors like to re-design the credits, and that's fine, but I don't like to remove people who contributed to the original film from the credits.

- 20:09 - the screen suddenly goes black for about six seconds. Was this intentional? It feels very odd.

Yes; it was intentional. It was supposed to be humorous but was ultimately caused by the fact that, after I removed the guide (who did not fit the new feel of the film and was redundant after changes to the plot) I had very little footage with which to work in which he is not standing there - literally seconds - so I had to make the ending of Brecca's "act" the beginning and fade to black while the laughter continues to indicate the completion of the act and the passage of time. I''ll go staight to the hall instead and hope that the laughter itself bridges the gap.

- 26:22 - An audio fade doesn't quite work here. It might be better not to do it at all...?
- 30:40 - Quite a notably bad audio transition, the audio after being quite loud suddenly drops out and conversely:
- 31:00 - The music comes in very quickly - this could be resolved by fading up a bit slower

EDIT: I've had a look at these. At 26:22 the problem is where the king finishes laughing right? Not where the sea hag enters the hall?
The audio is actually weird here in the original. That's not really my fade. There's also a weird noise in the background that you hear with headphones, which really stands out when it's on the transition. I'll try to get rid of it, but this was a problem I wrestled with for ages.

30:40 is where the original audio is extremely problematic. Audio from one scene, which has been deleted, intrudes heavily on the next scene. I'll see if I can cut some of the video, to make it better. I'll fade the music in more slowly at 31:00. Say double the time?

I'll work at it. :grin: Thanks!

P.S. I would also like to thank M77 and Molasar for their willingness to help.

I'm happy to report that after working with the editor - all the above issues with this edit are now fixed.

Therefore - welcome aboard mate.

Thanks! Good to be aboard!

I have created cover art for this release:

(download here)

Boon, thank you so so much! It looks amazing. What program did you use?

Did you have a look at the edit?? To tell the truth, I've been terrified of one of your in-depth reviews. :lol:

I am glad you like it. I am still using Jasc Paint Shop Pro, because I am still too lazy to go the huge step of learning Adobe Photoshop. That's the problem when you are still happy with what you use, even though it is a lot worse than Photoshop.
No, I did not watch it yet, but I sure will soon and of course you'll get a cute little review.

Beowulf And Grendel by Captain Khajiit

review by boon23

Prologue:
I found the original a mostly slow, yet detailed watching experience that did not entertain me too much. Yet I do like medieval movies. This is a drastic cut. The good comments and reviews led me to being quite excited about watching it.

As for all my reviews: this is just my personal opinion of this fanedit. I cannot tell anybody else, if he or she will experience it in the same way or the opposite. So my review is not objective and does not reflect the opinion of fanedit.org.

!!!!This review contains heavy spoilers!!!

The edit:
The idea to cut back to the very source of the Beowulf & Grendel story is nice, because the original suffers from distractions and long rather dull moments IMO. However cutting it down so much to just 35 minutes did not make it appear as a movie anymore. The plot is well delivered though and works. Being Beowulf centric it took the best of what the movie had to offer and made it more of an action movie in the way of 13th Warrior.
On the bad side all the subtlety of the original story (motives of the Troll and his mother) is gone and what is left is a superficial (fitting to the title) slayer movie.
The ending fell flat through a drastic cut from the funeral to Beowulf on the ship leaving Denland.
Overall I was mildly entertained, but in the end disappointed by the unnecessarily quick ending.
editing: 8 of 10 (the ending was not well executed, the end credits list people that were not in the fanedit)
entertainment: 5 of 10 (original 6 of 10. What was too long in the original was too short in this fanedit)

Image and video quality:
Image and video quality were very good. Womble once more shows its strength here.
Video quality: 10 of 10

Audio editing and audio quality:
There were no hard audio cuts. Audio was perfect.
audio editing: 10 of 10
sound quality: 10 of 10
resulting in a 10 of 10 for overall audio

presentation:
The DVD comes with a still menu with no sound. There is an animated chapter selection without sound. I have seen worse. The cover art was created by me, so I cannot take it into account. There are no extras.
To sum it up:
Animated scene selection is nice but not really necessary for such a short movie. The project would have been better with more effort, like the inclusion of extras. As it is it feels like a rushed job.
resulting in a 4 of 10 for overall presentation

Final result: 6 of 10 (because I stick in this case to my concept of not rating more than 1 star higher than the movie was entertaining for me)
A quite good firstling.

I thank boon23 for his review. I have been thinking about how - or whether - to respond to it, but ducking issues is not at all my style and I prefer to take things head on, so I think I might as well raise a few points.

First of all, I'm glad you liked the video and audio, and (overall) the delivery of the plot.

boon23 said:

On the bad side all the subtlety of the original story (motives of the Troll and his mother) is gone and what is left is a superficial (fitting to the title) slayer movie.

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Well, the troll, in the original, had no motivations. Removing them was necessary to avoid following the original plot and make a new one, and it seemed to me to be an all-or-nothing situation.

boon23 said:

Overall I was mildly entertained, but in the end disappointed by the unnecessarily quick ending.

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The thing is that themes from the original plot were so heavily intertwined with much of the material that when I removed everything that would conflict with my new plot, there was very little left. Gunnarson's revisionist take on the story permeates the film, and like a lingering smell it was hard to get rid of.

A good example of this, is the hall scene, in which the troll's arm is paraded around. In the original, this is cause for celebration; in Gunnarson's interpretation of Beowulf, there are disapproving glances that had to be removed. This is why this scene is much shorter, and may other are cut short for similar reasons. This is also why the editing seemed quick at times, and I'm afraid I have to disagree with "unnecessarily quick", as 99% of the time the alternative is to leave in material that goes against the new plot.

boon23 said:

the ending was not well executed, the end credits list people that were not in the fanedit

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I agree that the ending was extremely quick. It was not something I had failed to notice, but the remainder of the dialogue at the funeral scene did not fit the new plot IMO, and I could see no other way to end the film, apart from cutting straight from Beowulf's killing of the mother to the beginning of the return journey, which would seem even more drastic. I simply did not know what else to do to end the edit, so I executed the ending as well as I could.

As for the credits, I have to disagree with the common practice on fanedit.org. I am not morally comfortable with removing people who contributed to a film from the credits. I persoanlly feel that I am just editing a film that other people have made. Even if I were in a future edit, to re-style the credits entirely, I wouldn't edit out people who had contributed to the film. I can think of movie industry examples of this, but I won't bore you. Other faneditors can do whatever they like in this area, and I won't make any judgments about their decisions, but I have to follow my conscience here.

boon23 said:

The project would have been better with more effort, like the inclusion of extras. As it is it feels like a rushed job.

Click to expand...

Well, the problem is that I simply don't care about this aspect of fanediting at all. I made the DVD to try to follow established practice,as laid out in your own basic guide to fanediting, to which I tried to adhere, but I was going against my own personal preferences. For example, I don't like surround sound and never have. I made the AC3 5.1 because other people seem to like it. The same goes for the animated scene selection. I tried make an animated main menu, but couldn't get it to work.

It didn't help that I find animated menus intensely irritating. I mute them rather than listening to the same music played over and over again while I'm getting ready to watch a film, after loading a DVD. It drives me nuts.

Moreover, I much prefer a still image to seeing bits of a movie that I'm about to watch, and have much the same response to animated menus as most people do to seeing a trailer of the film they are about to see at the cinema beforehand. It is unlikely that my technical skills in this department will ever reach those of the more prominent editors here - I am not artistic in this sense of the word - and it is likely that future releases from me will - like Gekko and a few others - be AVIs or mp4s only.

I respect your opinion, boon, and I hope you don't find this reply to be confrontational. I just thought I needed to make clear that for me a fanedit, like the original on which it is based, is about the film and nothing but the film. I thank you again for the review and for the cover art you created for this release.

no offense taken.
Opinions are what they are... just like tastes.
About the credits thing though: I think if the need is felt to name everyone that was involved in the original project, a little special feature with the original credits will totally do the job. For me a fanedit is a complete new take on a movie, at best one that does not require watching the original movie. That's why I think it should be exactly what it is. Respecting the original movie and the makers with the end original end credits does not make much sense to me, because you already showed all possible disrespect by altering it. It's a bit like abusing a woman and saying "sorry" afterwards.

boon23 said:

For me a fanedit is a complete new take on a movie, at best one that does not require watching the original movie. That's why I think it should be exactly what it is. Respecting the original movie and the makers with the end original end credits does not make much sense to me, because you already showed all possible disrespect by altering it. It's a bit like abusing a woman and saying "sorry" afterwards.

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If you'll pardon me for saying so, that strikes as a slightly unusual attitude for the administrator of fanedit.org to take. I don't equate having fanedited a film to having "showed all possible disrespect by altering it" at all. In fact, I intend to fanedit films I love greatly and for which have nothing but the deepest of respect. I consider editing a film an act of appreciation for the original, as I would never choose to re-imagine or reinterpret something I thought was without virtue.

In a nutshell, I don't think of fanediting as making a bad film good. I think of it as making a good, if flawed or perhaps incomplete, film better. To me this is a bit like Anthony Payne completing Elgar's third symphony. This is a far cry from all possible disrespect. I haven't yet seen a fanedit of a bad film that makes it into a good film, and I have seen many.

boon23 said:

It's a bit like abusing a woman and saying "sorry" afterwards.

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Well, this strikes me as a rather extreme simile, and I confess to being a little shocked. Not only that but, as far as my motivations go, it is not at all accurate. I wouldn't intend retaining all names in the original credits to be an apology for my act of fanediting. I would intend retaining them as continuing to show my respect and appreciation for the effort people put into the original work, which in my opinion always greatly outweighs that of faneditors, no matter how many hours they spend on it.

No doubt we simply have an entirely different perspective here.

Captain Khajiit said:

If you'll pardon me for saying so, that strikes as a slightly unusual attitude for the administrator of fanedit.org to take. I don't equate having fanedited a film to having "showed all possible disrespect by altering it" at all. In fact, I intend to fanedit films I love greatly and for which have nothing but the deepest of respect. I consider editing a film an act of appreciation for the original, as I would never choose to re-imagine or reinterpret something I thought was without virtue.

In a nutshell, I don't think of fanediting as making a bad film good. I think of it as making a good, if flawed or perhaps incomplete, film better. To me this is a bit like Anthony Payne completing Elgar's third symphony. This is a far cry from all possible disrespect. I haven't yet seen a fanedit of a bad film that makes it into a good film, and I have seen many.

boon23 said:

It's a bit like abusing a woman and saying "sorry" afterwards.

Click to expand...

Well, this strikes me as a rather extreme simile, and I confess to being a little shocked. Not only that but, as far as my motivations go, it is not at all accurate. I wouldn't intend retaining all names in the original credits to be an apology for my act of fanediting. I would intend retaining them as continuing to show my respect and appreciation for the effort people put into the original work, which in my opinion always greatly outweighs that of faneditors, no matter how many hours they spend on it.

No doubt we simply have an entirely different perspective here.

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yes. Thing is, you should talk to the original makers of a movie and ask for their opinion about anyone altering their stuff (and especially in such a drastic way as you did it). My opinion here is based on this.
If you create something and someone else alters it without asking it sure cannot be seen as a gesture of respect for the original, no matter how hard one tries. Of course I do love fanedits, but I think I also can see them as what they are. Positively speaking they are new pieces of art. Negatively speaking they are raping someone else's work.
Both views can co-exist and both do not say anything about the quality of the altered work or of the original work.
I have myself used the "I have all respect for the original and the makers" speech, but of course I also know, where it lacks logic.

To further explain my view on self created end credits:
I am the audience and I want to be entertained. When I watch a fanedit it lasts from the very beginning to the very ending. I enjoy being entertained in the last 4 or 5 minutes when the end credits roll by reading something about the fanedit instead about something that I actually did not watch in this case: the original.
Now some people make a remarkable effort with their own end credits and they do deserve praise for that, because it is a true ending to a fanedit. Those who just add the original credits for whatever reason rather seem to want the audience to switch the fanedit off before the last image thing was shown.
Entertainment-wise the original credits do not add at all to a fanedit experience.

boon23 said:

yes. Thing is, you should talk to the original makers of a movie and ask for their opinion about anyone altering their stuff (and especially in such a drastic way as you did it). My opinion here is based on this.
If you create something and someone else alters it without asking it sure cannot be seen as a gesture of respect for the original, no matter how hard one tries.

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I'm starting to understand your point of view, boon, but I do think there is a difference between saying that the original makers of the film might not see an alteration of their work as a gesture of respect and saying it cannot be seen as one. I actually did really like Gunnarson's Beowulf and the Zemeckis film that followed, even though both in their different ways altered and reinterpreted the original story. Just as their films were not born of a lack of respect for the original, my edit wasn't born of a lack of respect for theirs.

George Lucas, although in some ways slightly exceptional, is known to be somewhat more laid back to fan productions than some other directors. Adywan's ANHR is a good example of an edit that's inspired by respect for the original.

boon23 said:

Now some people make a remarkable effort with their own end credits and they do deserve praise for that, because it is a true ending to a fanedit. Those who just add the original credits for whatever reason rather seem to want the audience to switch the fanedit off before the last image thing was shown. Entertainment-wise the original credits do not add at all to a fanedit experience.

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Oh, I 100% agree that people who make their own edits deserve praise for their hard work. I just don't care if the original credits are retained. I personally will switch off before the credits roll with both the fanedit and the orginal alike. I guess I just don't find credits part of the entertainment experience. They're just a functional item to me.

I can fully agree to the point that faneditors have a lot of respect for the original work. But no matter how hard we want to show it, they probably will not see it that way.

GL being laid back... well, I would not state it like that... otherwise we would have gotten "Revenge Of The Phantom". Let's see what happens when Ady releases Empire...

boon23 said:

GL being laid back... well, I would not state it like that... otherwise we would have gotten "Revenge Of The Phantom". Let's see what happens when Ady releases Empire...

Click to expand...

Indeed! That'll be interesting, especially as it'll be in HD.

I was thinking of the official Star Wars fan film awards, or whatever they're calling them now. GL could certainly have been less tolerant than he has been up till now.

We'll wait and watch, my friend. :wink: